1948 Universal Janitor
Li Yao agreed with the mental devil.
Neltharion’s every action consumed a lot of fuel. Having entered the Divinity Transformation Stage only recently, he could not control his models of spiritual energy very well, either.
Should he make any error in the construction of attack models at the critical moment in the middle of a danger, one ultimate attack would drain all the energy of the device.
Besides, as a piece of high-precision tiny magical equipment, Neltharion was too eye-catching, with too many traces of the Star Glory Federation’s style on it, which would be hard to explain once the Immortal Cultivators discovered it.
Moreover, he had come to the planet to search for intelligence, resources, and maintenance magical equipment. It was certainly not a good idea to act stealthily all the time. He was desperately in need of a body that could easily integrate into the local environment and had a huge storage s.p.a.ce.
Naturally, Li Yao did not intend to ‘possess’ a new physical body, which was in violation of his belief.
Besides, possession could be very dangerous. One moment of carelessness, and he could be swallowed by the soul of the original owner of the body, like how Li Yao’s soul had swallowed Ou Yezi’s in the past.
Since it was only a temporary operation of infiltration, he did not need to possess anyone else’s body but only needed to find an artificial body designed for spectral Cultivators.
After all, the Cultivators whose souls had left their bodies were like a strengthened version of the spectral Cultivators.
If he could not even find an artificial body, then spiritual puppets, beast puppets, or any kind of magical equipment with embedded crystal processors that could control the limbs to make complicated movements would suffice.
In the past couple of years, Li Yao had basically grasped the techniques to hack the crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus that Professor Mo Xuan had left for him.
He was not a specialist of crystal processors. Naturally, he was not as good as Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan, but it should not be a problem for him to hack and control a common spiritual puppet.
Neltharion hovered in midair for a long time and finally selected a city that had been half demolished by an enormous crater. It then quickly descended.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Before they reached the skyline of the city debris, feeble alarms were immediately ringing inside Neltharion, reminding Li Yao that it was a heavily-polluted radiation area down below.
When he scanned the area with his new eyes, the previous gray, rusty area of remnants became a colorful swirl that was flowing slowly.
Dust that contained tremendous radiation was waving crazily like the tentacles of devils.
Although not as high as the radiation spurted out of the nebula of the Devilish Scorpion Galaxy, the radiation here is still quite shocking.
If the ordinary people enter the radiation area recklessly without any protection, while they might not get killed on the spot, their mitochondria and gene strands will certainly be seriously warped, resulting in all kinds of weird mutations.
No wonder the place is utterly desolate and n.o.body tries to rebuild the civilization on the ruins.
Li Yao sighed and strained his eyes.
As far as his eyes could see, all the enormous craters that occupied the land were emitting radiation waves of different colors.
At first glance, they appeared to be as vivid and glitzy as fire.
Only the Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivators such as Li Yao could sense the foulness hidden below the fancy brilliance.
Before, Li Yao only had a basic knowledge about the evilness of the Immortal Cultivators.
But everything that had happened to the main planet of the Martial Meritocrats Sector showed him in the most sensational way what kind of monsters the Immortal Cultivators were.
Seeing the picture before his eyes, Li Yao was more confident about finding ‘Starlight’, the resistance organization of Cultivators, and ‘the lost Cultivator’.
Where there was oppression, there was resistance. This was indeed a world that had been most oppressed. If there was a resistance organization, this must be where it was based.
Neltharion dived into the debris of the city and moved forward on the zigzagging main roads. The rundown buildings on both sides looked like tombstones that rose to the sky.
Having not been frequented by human beings for a long time, the ruins were covered in a thick layer of dust of radiation. Many places looked like they were coated in fluffy snow.
Weird noises came from the skysc.r.a.pers that had been burnt down, leaving only the framework left. Roars of ferocious animals could vaguely be heard, too.
It seemed that some wild beasts that had mutated because of high radiation levels and luckily survived had claimed the city of tombstones as their territory.
Li Yao had no time to bother with the ferocious, mutated beasts. He simply unleashed feeble mystic rays and searched for the reactions of crystal processors in the depths of the ruins.
To his disappointment, after a long search, he did not even find a control chip of the lowest level, much less a crystal processor.
With Vulture Li Yao’s abundant work experience in the magical equipment graveyard, he could tell that the ruins of the city had been searched time and time again, not by the same group of people but by hundreds of groups who had different styles. The place was like a piece of gum that had been chewed for ten days and ten nights. Not the slightest juice could be tasted again.
Li Yao was both slightly upset and delighted.
Since the place had been explored countless times during the past hundreds of years, a lot of settlements of human beings must be somewhere nearby.
Pondering for a moment, he moved toward the enormous crater.
The closer he was to the crater, the more intense the radiation became. The mini crystal processor on Neltharion beeped nonstop.
Finally, he reached the edge of the enormous crater.
Looking down from there, he could not imagine that it was a crater at all. The slopes on his left and right were endless, making it look more like a bottomless abyss.
The bottom of the abyss was enshrouded in black fog. The stinky smell of steam could also be vaguely sensed, which must have been caused by the pools of rainwater in the past hundreds of years.
However, at the edge of the crater close to the ground, black holes could be found, like a honeycomb that had been half dissected.
Li Yao’s guess was correct. Judging from the scale of the city, it must have been built in the most glorious years of the civilization. At that time, the locals of the Martial Meritocrats Sector must have grasped the technology to build underground towns.
The more developed a civilization, the higher their efficiency in the utilization of the s.p.a.ce within the atmosphere. Like the Heaven’s Origin Sector, the Martial Meritocrats Sector had constructed enormous, delicately-made underground cities.
The terrifying weapon tests that the Imperium of True Human Beings conducted had destroyed the cities both on and beneath the ground.
However, the underground parts were blocked by thick rocks and soil after all. It was possible that something could have been left behind.
Naturally, the radiation intensity there was the highest, too. Li Yao’s soul could sense blasts that felt like surging tides even though it was at the Divinity Transformation Stage.
It was a good thing. The radiation had probably prevented the survivors from searching the area, and he might find something of value.
Along an enormous sewer that had long dried, Neltharion flew into the underground city.
The environment in the underground city was much more complicated than on the ground. The collapses and landslides in the past hundred years had turned the place into a messy maze.
Li Yao’s guess was correct. The powerful radiation and the complicated environment were enough to stop most of the explorers. He found a lot of objects that were suspected to be spiritual puppets.
It was a pity that the glorious days of the civilization there dated back to a thousand years ago, which meant that most of the magical equipment there had a history of a thousand years.
Having been seriously wrecked in the explosion before being ravaged by time ruthlessly for hundreds of years, they were all rusty and riddled with holes, and their crystal processors had been melted into sc.r.a.p metal, making them barely suffice as a temporary body.
Li Yao scratched his nonexistent hair and searched for three hours, only to discover one body that could somehow be put into use. But it was actually a…
“Universal Janitor? What the heck is this thing?”
Staring at the remnant of the spiritual puppet that he had dug out of the ruins, Li Yao was at a loss.
The remnant before him was about one meter tall and in the form of a cylinder.
At the beginning, it was probably a futuristic silver color. However, after the torture of the explosion and the pa.s.sage of time, it had turned into a hideous gray, with brown spots of rusts all over the surface, as if it had skin lesions.
It looked like a garbage can at a distance and a bucket up close. The most unbelievable part was that it did not move in an anti-gravity way but had two tracks installed right below the body.
The cylindrical body was in a very simple structure. There was a tool compartment that could automatically open or close on each side. Inside the compartments, more than ten different mechanical limbs—including pliers, drills, and scissors for gardening—were folded and stored. However, most of the tools were too rusted to be moved anymore. Even those that could be moved had a suspicious hardness. After a tiny quake of Li Yao’s soul, one of the scissors directly broke apart!
An enormous metal plaque was nailed to the bottom of the ‘garbage can’. From the obscure handwriting on it, Li Yao managed to confirm the ident.i.ty and usage of the spiritual puppet.
It was a puppet for cleaning and maintenance that was very suitable for underground cities.
It could enter the complicated, stinky tubes beneath the ground to eradicate the dirt on the wall; drive away c.o.c.kroaches, rats, and other pests occupying the area; and perform simple maintenance on the damaged parts.
Of course, after different parts were replaced, it was also good at jobs such as cleaning the road, gardening, garbage collection, and so on.
All in all, it was a multipurpose spiritual puppet designed for cleaning and maintenance in the city. That was why it was named ‘Universal Janitor’!
“Are we going to carry out a highly-dangerous operation of infiltration and intelligence-collection with such a thing?” Li Yao was quite skeptical.
“It can’t be helped,” the mental devil said. “The hundreds of spiritual puppets we found are all garbage. Only this one has crystal processors and energy circuits that are not entirely beyond rescue. We can use it first and change to something later after we find a settlement of human beings!
“Also, I think that the ‘Universal Janitor’ is not bad at all. Look. Its crystal processor is not very complicated. Even we can easily hack and control it. Also, the multipurpose mechanical arms it has been installed with can help us perform all kinds of complicated movements. It is st.u.r.dy and robust, with great room for maintenance and upgrade. Most importantly of all, it carries a tiny garbage compressing cabin in itself, which is the best place to store Neltharion.
“We are not going to use it in a fight anyway. In an emergency, we still have Neltharion and our souls. Isn’t such a low-profile but luxurious configuration ideal for us right now?